[Shop]

While floating above a newly created world in the void of virtual space, James leaned back with a satisfied smile as he read the system notifications that floated before him.

[Mission complete.]

[Processing reward…]

[Reward(s): [Shop], [Item] tab, {Voucher-Item}.]

It had felt like decades since he'd last heard from the system, though it was likely far more considering how long he'd spent in dilated time. Surprisingly, this last game world he'd created had taken almost as much as Halo had.

Despite being far smaller in scale, due to the fact that James had just made a single game out of the trilogy, the Reality Synch had taken ages to complete. It had even failed twice before sticking, forcing him to go back over his work with a fine-toothed comb each time.

At least he'd learned the limitations of his system out of the endeavor. He couldn't just throw out an outline of a world and rely on the RS to flush it out. That had the possibility to put a damper on many of his future plans once he ran out of his most well-known franchises, at least that was what he thought until he opened up the [Shop] and took a look around at its wares.

From what he could tell, the [Shop] was separated into multiple sections, designated by which 'Tab' they fell under. And while there was only one available to him at the moment, he was smart enough to imply that, the need for delegation in general, meant that there would be multiple of such in the future.

After scrolling through the new feature of his system, James had a rough idea of how both his current [Shop] tab, and the ones he'd acquire in the future, would function.

Essentially, they used something along the lines of 'faith' (for the lack of a better word) of the citizens within the realities that he linked to. All those who heard about, talked about, or even just thought about the franchises James spread to their worlds, generated 'faith points,' which were designated as FP by the system. However, what ended up being the greatest contribution to his FP by far, were those who actively purchased and spent time immersing themselves in his VR.

There was an intricate and extremely detailed explanation to this phenomenon, but it basically boiled down to how much a person 'sacrificed' to ASTIR. Whether it be time, money, or even just simple emotions, the more of something that someone committed to his VR, the more FP they generated. This was however, all dependent on said person and what they truly 'sacrificed'.

For example; someone like Tony Stark would generate a pitiful amount of FP even if he bought every single game James released, while an unemployed man would generate far more. The opposite was also true for time, a man as busy as Iron Man spending hours in VR each day, was worth far more FP than someone who wasted their days idling away.

Overall, it was a very complicated system and James was more than happy that it was all done automatically, as he had no idea how to implement such a thing on his own. After seeing how it ran so smoothly without his knowledge up to this point, even going so far to subtly influence the pricing of his VR games in the linked realities, he chose to ignore it entirely and allow it to do its thing in the background. This was a system designed by Gods after all, James knew he was nowhere near their level and likely wouldn't be for many, many years.

Getting back to the new [Item] tab, it sold just about anything that could fall under the classification of an 'object,' from every world that James had created so far in his VR. Also, most likely as an added bonus by the Gods of his former world, there was an entire section dedicated to items from his Earth which were easily far cheaper than anything else in the store. James could only guess that his system fabricated the items out of pure FP, while stuff from his former world was 'purchased' and sent over by said Gods themselves.

From what the man could see, it was a nice discount but, it could just as easily be a rip-off as he didn't know the true value of his FP to them. Nevertheless, James was in no hurry to waste all his hard-earned currency and so he saw himself likely buying from the Earth store for the foreseeable future.

Just a simple comparison of common items shared within three stores was enough to convince him of that.

———————————————

[Shop] – [Item]

————————

Bicycle (Pokémon) ——— 2% FP

Bicycle (Halo) ——— 0.2% FP

Bicycle (Earth) ——— 0.001% FP

———————————————

James had quickly adjusted his [Shop]'s display to only show a percentage of his total FP as prices for simplicity's sake, as the numbers had just became far too large that they somewhat blurred together. Nevertheless, it showcased his point clearly.

While these prices didn't take into account the different technological aspects of each bicycle and could be further refined based on the specificities that James was looking for in said product, after testing the shop out for around an hour and getting each product as close as possible to each other technologically, products from Earth were still around 10-100x cheaper than those created via his VR worlds.

This wasn't to say that James had no interest in buying from the VR world stores, he definitely did. There were simply too many things in them that were unique and unavailable in the Earth one. It was just that, for common objects you could find anywhere, Earth was the place to purchase them.

But going back to the reason why the [Shop] had alleviated his worries about running out of worlds to create, there existed an incredibly useful section under the Earth store that solved this very issue.

———————————————

[Shop] – [Item] – [Earth]

————————————

Anime - Demon Slayer ——— 0.0015% FP

Anime - Dragon Ball ——— 0.0015% FP

…

Comic(s) - DC ——— 0.0001% FP

Comic(s) - Marvel ——— 0.0001% FP

…

Manga - Bleach ——— 0.00001% FP

Manga - One Piece ——— 0.00003% FP

…

Movie - John Wick ——— 0.001% FP

Movie - Lord of the Rings ——— 0.0013% FP

…

Video Game - Doom ——— 0.002% FP

Video Game - Skyrim ——— 0.002% FP

———————————————

All the works created on Earth, to this day, were available for purchase and unlike the stores based on his VR creations, they continued to update in real time. Unless the apocalypse that the God's had predicted befalls his home universe, James will have no problems fulfilling his assigned task far into the foreseeable future.